


coffee and scream

by tryslora



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Community: fullmoon_ficlet, M/M, Past Kate Argent/Derek Hale, Pre-Slash, Primal Scream - Freeform, scream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 20:44:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6439789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryslora/pseuds/tryslora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek hates primal scream. Sure, it’s great a way to let out stress during finals, but someone always goes too far. On the other hand, if Jackson hadn’t been an asshole, Derek might not have met Stiles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	coffee and scream

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written for prompt #166 - Scream at fullmoon_ficlet on Livejournal. When I was in college, every term, we had primal scream at 10pm during finals week. And I lived in Fox Hall, across the quad from Davison, and the first round of finals, my roommates and some boys in Davison started hurling insults during primal scream. And I really wanted to turn that into fic for this prompt. This is absolutely unbetaed, so sorry for any strange words or typos.

Derek hates primal scream.

He knows why the campus promotes it, knows why it’s useful. He understands the psychology behind the moment when every student on campus opens their window and screams into the night, all at the same time. He can see the way it relieves stress, the way they are able to focus again after.

But he doesn’t have to like it.

It irritates his ears, leaves him wishing for ear plugs and better windows as voices echo off the outside of the glass. The noise has a solid feel, punching the walls around him, closing in on him. He reaches out, pushes down on a window that is already closed and locked, then yanks the curtain as if the thin fabric will give him more of a buffer.

There’s a momentary break, then another fresh round of noise, accompanied by someone pounding on his door.

Because of course there’s going to be some kind of floor emergency now, too. That’s just Derek’s luck. It’s not as if he doesn’t have his own finals to study for.

He sets aside his book and yanks open his door just as Cora has her hand pulled back to knock again. Instead she wraps one hand around his wrist and pulls hard, yanking him into the hallway. “You need to shut Jackson up,” she says, shoving at him.

Derek manages to touch his throat and make sure he’s wearing his lanyard and key before she pulls his door closed with a thunk. Then she’s pulling him towards the room Jackson’s room, and Derek can hear him clearly long before they get there, the door open on the hallway.

“Fuck you, asswipe!” Jackson yells, voice far enough away that he’s probably leaning out the window. “You can’t fucking tell me what to do.”

Shit. There’s always one on the freshman floor. There always has to be one.

Derek murmurs a thank you to Cora, who smirks as she ducks away down the hall before Derek raps sharply on the open door. Jackson ignores him, hurling curses into the open air of the quad, and Derek can hear through the window the faint voice of someone yelling more creative curses back.

“Jackson.” Derek lowers his voice, snapping out the word, and Jackson ducks back inside fast enough to hit his head on the upper sash of the window. Derek crosses his arms, raises one eyebrow, and waits.

“He started it.”

Derek lifts his eyebrow a little higher.

“There was someone caterwauling like a fucking banshee,” Jackson tells him. “Imagine if a banshee was getting fucked up against the wall, and everything around it is dying—so I told her to shut the fuck up.”

“And someone yelled back?” It’s obvious, because it’s how it always happens, when stress relief turns into things you’d never say out loud in the light of day. In retrospect, this wasn’t that bad. At least it didn’t get personal, except for the banshee comment. And Derek’s not going to let that slide.

“Some white knight, yeah.”

Derek huffs a sigh, pinches the bridge of his nose. “Where was the banshee?” He’d rather use a better word for the girl, but it’s the only one he’s got right now. He already noted where the other guy was—third floor and directly across the quad. If they had binoculars, they could probably see into the room.”

He also notices that they guy went silent as soon as Jackson shut up.

“Second floor. Toward the front of the building.” Jackson crosses his arms, jaw tight and lips pressed thin. “Why?”

Kate’s floor. Of course it’s Kate’s floor. And just like that, Derek’s phone is chiming with an incoming text.

_You’d better bring your boy over to apologize._

Fuck this night. Fuck the primal scream. Just fuck everything.

“Because you’re going to apologize to that girl. You crossed a line, Jackson.” Derek crosses his arms as well, raises both eyebrows for effect, and waits until Jackson wilts under his glare. “And after you apologize to her, you’re going to apologize to the guy on the third floor as well.”

“He owes me an apology,” Jackson grumbles.

“Maybe, but you owe him one first.” Derek’s firm on this. “Put on shoes and let’s go.”

#

Kate’s waiting at the front door of Davison to let them in. While the two buildings form a U-shaped quad, there’s a wall between them, and they have to exit one building and don’t have access to get into the other. She holds the door open and manages to stand just enough in the way that they have to physically push past her, brushing against her on the way. “Isn’t he a pretty one,” she murmurs, and Derek can almost hear the way Jackson’s ears perk up at the compliment.

“She will chew you up and spit you out like week old gum,” Derek tells him. “Don’t even think about it.”

“Ignore Derek; he’s still bitter.” Kate caresses his cheek. “It was only the first semester of our freshman year. Don’t tell me you’re still pining, darling.”

“I’m not.” His voice is flat. He never pined. He can’t even think what he ever saw in her, but he was eighteen, away from home for the first time, and he wanted desperately to do something for himself. Unfortunately, Kate was not the right choice to make, and he’s been stuck circling around her ever since. “Jackson’s here to apologize to the girl on your floor.”

“Of course he is. What a good boy.” Kate touches Jackson’s shoulder, points to the stairs. “Come with me, darling, and I’ll introduce you to Lydia and you can make up for what you said.”

There are so many ways this could go wrong.

Derek wants to leave Jackson there, let him follow Kate upstairs, let Kate hand him off to Ennis on the third floor, but he just can’t do it. Jackson’s an adult, technically, but he’s also insecure and easily swayed by a pretty face, and Derek’s job is technically to take care of these kids from his floor.

So fine, he follows Jackson up the stairs and down the hall to a door marked in bright paper letters as belonging to Lydia and Allison.

A petite girl with red curls opens the door at the first sharp knock. She glances at Kate, then looks past her to Jackson, and her gaze narrows. “You’re an asshole,” she says sharply.

“I am,” Jackson says. “I shouldn’t have called you a banshee.”

The girl flicks her fingers in the air. “I’ve been called worse. You shouldn’t have told me to shut the fuck up. The entire point of primal scream is to scream, which is what I was doing. You sounded like a braying ass, and I didn’t try to tell you to stop.” She stops, cocks her head. “On the other hand, you were rude to Stiles. Who was rude back. You can apologize to him later. Allison’s out and I need someone to quiz me. And you owe me.”

She hooks her fingers in his collar, and Jackson stumbles forward, looking dazed.

“I’m Jackson,” he manages to say.

“Lydia.” She glances back at where Derek lingers in the door, Kate just behind him. “You can go now. I have this under control.”

Derek isn’t leaving until he’s sure Jackson wants to be left. “Are you good?”

Jackson’s eyebrows go up, his gaze flicking from Derek to Lydia and back again. “I’m fine. Tell Danny I might not be back tonight.”

“He’ll be back tonight,” Lydia says. “He’ll be exhausted when I’m done with him, and he can’t sleep here. It’s bad enough that Allison has Scott here half the nights.” She smiles sweetly at Kate. “Not that we’d ever break the floor rules and have a boy stay over.”

Kate’s piercing look is disturbing, and Derek pulls the door shut, leaving Lydia and Jackson to their own devices. He tried to protect him. He can only hope that Lydia’s got a heart under the hard shell she’s showing to the world. Or maybe Jackson doesn’t care.

Kate taps Derek’s chest. “Someone still needs to talk to Stiles,” she says slowly. “Why don’t you stop by my room, get a drink first, then I’ll take you upstairs.”

“No.” He nudges her hand away. “Definitely no. Send Jackson back in one piece, Kate.”

“Oh, Lydia’s a _nice_ girl.” It’s not a compliment the way she emphasizes the word. “Jackson will be fine. Such a pity, though, he really is very pretty.”

“Don’t, Kate.” Derek resolves to sit Jackson down and give him fair warnings when all is said and done, just in case Kate tries again. He learned the hard way not to trust her, and she fixates when she wants something. Derek isn’t the only one who’s been burned.

He walks away, thankful that she doesn’t follow as he heads up to the third floor. It’s a mirror image of his own floor, and he heads past Ennis’s room—door tightly closed, no light seeping beneath it—and stops outside the room directly across from Jackson and Danny’s on the other side of the quad. The door has a white board, with two columns marked for Stiles and Scott and no pen anywhere in evidence.

Derek knocks once sharply.

The door opens and someone almost barrels into him, pulling up just before passing through the doorway. He has a beanie pulled down on his head, and a bag over his shoulder, and he stands just as tall as Derek. He’s thin and rangy, and his hands swing out to catch the doorway as he rocks back on his heels. “Whoa. Wait. Did I hear you knock?”

“I would hope so.” Derek waits for a greeting, raises an eyebrow in a hint that maybe something should be said.

The boy stares at him.

“Stiles?” Derek prompts, and Stiles nods in return.

“Yes, that’s me.” The words trail off slowly. “Why?” His amber eyes furrow worriedly. “Is that jackass complaining about me? I was just protecting Lydia, who is a shining beacon of awesome and doesn’t deserve to be talked at like that.”

“I get the feeling Lydia can actually protect herself,” Derek says dryly, if _protect_ is the right word for how she’s handling Jackson right now. “And yes, Jackson complained, but he was going to apologize to you until Lydia decided to conscript him. He shouldn’t have said that to you. Or to her.”

Stiles’s mouth twists into a wry smile. “And I shouldn’t have yelled any of that back at him, so you can tell him I’m sorry, too. You his RA? And sorry, I really need to…” Stiles edges forward just a bit. “Can you let me out of my room? I was heading to the library, and it’s only open for another hour and I really need someplace quiet to study. Plus Scott’s coming back soon and he’s with Allison, so….” Stiles makes a face and shrugs. “Sexiled,” he says.

There’s something incredibly expressive about the way he moves. His eyes have little gold lights in them, and his hands wave in the air like they’re speaking their own language. And the moles on his face have a pattern, something that Derek wants to trace right down to his mouth. That very perfect, pouty mouth.

Shit.

“You all right, dude?” Stiles leans in a little closer. “You’re looking kind of glassy-eyed.”

“The coffee shop’s open until two during finals,” Derek finally says, because really, he needs to study too, and the dorms are getting crazy.

Stiles makes a dismissive gesture, and Derek follows the path of his long and graceful fingers. “Never works out. I mean, it’s always busy there, and I can’t get a table. Besides, I can’t afford coffee right now.”

Derek can see that he’s not getting the point.

“I’ll buy the coffee,” he says firmly. “If we stop off at my room so I can get my books. And my friend Erica’s on shift right now and she’ll let us sit in the back room. It’s quiet, and she’ll probably feed you day old pastries.”

In fact he knows she’ll feed him, because Erica’s been prodding him to be social. She’ll be so impressed that he has a date… well, that he’s brought someone for coffee… that she’ll feed them both.

“Free coffee, a quiet space, and day old pastries. What guy could resist?” Stiles grins, takes a step forward, and stops again. “Dude. You’re still in my doorway.”

Derek steps quickly back, and Stiles follows him, crowding in close, tapping him on the chest. It’s nothing like when Kate does it, and the tips of Derek’s ears go brightly hot.

“I just need to know one thing,” Stiles says, and he’s close enough that Derek can feel Stiles’s breath across his lips. “Is this a date?”

“If you want it to be.” Derek tells him, and Stiles flashes a bright grin.

“Date it is, then.” He draws back abruptly. “You have to wait for a kiss, though. What kind of guy would I be if we started making out before the actual date? Let’s go get your books. There’s coffee waiting for me.”

As Stiles moves quickly down the hall, Derek has to call after him, “Do you really need more coffee?”

Stiles leaps down the stairs, turning as he hits the landing. “Probably not, but you offered. You regretting it?”

And it’s funny how easy it is to answer that. “Not at all,” Derek tells him, and he leaps from the top step to land next to Stiles. “I’m not regretting it one bit.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can also find me [on tumblr](http://tryslora.tumblr.com)!


End file.
